Twin Harbor Blog

Waypoint Website Design and Development

Connect to the Linksys RV082 VPN from mac OSX

clock May 14, 2008 07:30 by author Mike

I recently purchased a new iMac running OS X 10.5 for my home office. I'm running Parallels so I can develop code in Visual Studio.net and SQL, and graphic design work we're now doing in the Mac environment. I ran into an issue when I wanted to connect to my office router, a linksys RV082. In Windows you need the Linksys Quick VPN utility to connect to the VPN, but Linksys provides no such utility for the mac OS. Plus, the QuickVPN utility crashes when you try to run it on Windows Server 2003 running inside of parallels. Since I couldn't find any documentation online for how to connect to the VPN from a mac, and no forum posts I could find got it going for me, I had to do some trial and error testing. I finally got it working so I thought I would post the solution here for future reference. 

1. In the Router admin console, go to VPN >> PPTP Server

2. Create a user account and password and make sure that the PPTP server is enabled. Save Changes.

3. On your Mac, open the network preferences dialog. Click the + icon under the list of all your network connections on the left to add a new one.

4. Set Interface to VPN, then select PPTP from the VPN Type dropdown. Name your service and click Create.

5. Enter the server address (public IP of your router) and the account name you created. Encryption set to automatic worked for me.

6. Open Authentication settings and enter your password.

7. Click Apply, then connect.

 

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Installation Order: SQL and Visual Studio

clock May 12, 2008 17:48 by author Mike

When building a new dev environment, there's an issue when you try to install Visual Studio followed by SQL Server because Visual Studio will install SQL Express if SQL server is not there. It causes some problems, so: 

The preferred order of installation is:

  • SQL Server 2005
  • VS 2005
Thanks to this page for details:
http://geekswithblogs.net/ingrid/archive/2006/02/03/68116.aspx  
 
 

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Fix for bulk upload tool in FireFox

clock April 29, 2008 22:19 by author Mike
We have launched a patch for a bug that prevented file uploads from working properly for galleries and file libraries in FireFox. We have not applied the patch to all Waypoint sites yet, but we will be running a script to deploy the patch system-wide soon. If you use firefox and would like the patch applied to your site, we can install it for you easily. Just open a ticket at http://support.twinharbor.com and request that the FireFox bug fix be installed on your site. Be sure to provide the domain name for your site.

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New Support Desk Launched!

clock April 29, 2008 20:23 by author Mike

We've launched a new support desk! To get support for any of our products including:

  • Waypoint
  • Website Hosting
  • Kerio Mail Server/Email Hosting
  • Waypoint Time Keeper
  • Obelisk Client Management
  • Waypoint Campground
Just send an email to support_nospam_@twinharbor.com (without the nospam part) - OR - visit http://support.twinharbor.com and click on New Case.

Providing professional, reliable support for our customers is, and has always been our top priority. This new system will help us make sure that all of your questions get answered and all of your issues get resolved.

Thank you for choosing Twin Harbor Web Solutions!

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How can I change the link to my website in search engine results?

clock April 29, 2008 15:15 by author Mike

When people find your website in a search engine, they see a title and a description. With Waypoint, changing how your site appears in these links is easy!

In Waypoint, you can update any Page's title and description. As you can see in the example above, different pages in your website may appear in search engine results. Each one can have its own title and description. To change these in Waypoint, just do the following:

  1. Log into your website using your Waypoint login and password
  2. From the admin menu, select My Website >> Pages
  3. You will see a list of all the pages in your website. Start with your home page (Default.aspx) and click Page Settings for that page.
  4. You will now see the Edit Page Form:



  5. The search engines will use the Page Title field for the link to your site, and will display a portion of the Description field below it. Update these as you see fit and click the Save Changes button. 
You'll want to do this for your home page primarily, but ideally you should do it for all of your pages since search engines may direct users to specific pages within your site depending on the search criteria.

Note: The Page Link field is how links will be displayed for this page in your Waypoint navbar component (if you're site uses a navbar). 

Once complete, it will take some time for search engines to pick up on this change and include it in their results. Depending on the search engine, it could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. 

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Flash File Upload in Firefox with Session Management

clock April 23, 2008 07:15 by author Mike

To allow for multiple file uploads, we've found that the new Flash file upload component works very well. The flash (swf) gets placed on a page or control in your site, and allows you to select a list of files from your local machine to upload to the web server. When you click the Upload button, the flash component will post the files to a specified URL. In ASP.Net we create an ASHX (http handler) to handle the post, validate and save the files. Within the ASHX, we need to check the session to ensure that the current user is authenticated. To do this, your class must implement IRequiresSessionState:

public class Upload : IHttpHandler, System.Web.SessionState.IRequiresSessionState {  ...

Once you do this, sessions will be available. BUT!  Only in Internet Explorer! Turns out that Firefox, and probably many other browsers, don't carry over the cookie that stores the ASP.net session ID, and when you try to access the session from the handler, none of the values are there and context.Session.IsNewSession is true. After much searching, I was able to find a solution. 

The Solution
I should note that in our case we are using SqlServer session state, but I believe this applies to inProc as well. 

In your globa.asax.cs you can add the following:

protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            /* Fix for the Flash Player Cookie bug in Non-IE browsers.
            * Since Flash Player always sends the IE cookies even in FireFox
            * we have to bypass the cookies by sending the values as part of the POST or GET
            * and overwrite the cookies with the passed in values.
            *
            * The theory is that at this point (BeginRequest) the cookies have not been read by
            * the Session and Authentication logic and if we update the cookies here we'll get our
            * Session and Authentication restored correctly
            */

            try
            {
                string session_param_name = "ASPSESSID";
                string session_cookie_name = "ASP.NET_SESSIONID";

                if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Form[session_param_name] != null)
                {
                    UpdateCookie(session_cookie_name, HttpContext.Current.Request.Form[session_param_name]);
                }
                else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[session_param_name] != null)
                {
                    UpdateCookie(session_cookie_name, HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[session_param_name]);
                }
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                Response.StatusCode = 500;
                Response.Write("Error Initializing Session");
            }

            try
            {
                string auth_param_name = "AUTHID";
                string auth_cookie_name = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName;

                if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Form[auth_param_name] != null)
                {
                    UpdateCookie(auth_cookie_name, HttpContext.Current.Request.Form[auth_param_name]);
                }
                else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[auth_param_name] != null)
                {
                    UpdateCookie(auth_cookie_name, HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[auth_param_name]);
                }

            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                Response.StatusCode = 500;
                Response.Write("Error Initializing Forms Authentication");
            }
        }
        void UpdateCookie(string cookie_name, string cookie_value)
        {
            HttpCookie cookie = HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies.Get(cookie_name);
            if (cookie == null)
            {
                cookie = new HttpCookie(cookie_name);
                HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies.Add(cookie);
            }
            cookie.Value = cookie_value;
            HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies.Set(cookie);

        }

** found this code here: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=541283

If you don't have a Global.asax in your application, you can add one to your project by selecting the 'Global Application Class' file template from the Add >> New Item menu.

The next step is to pass in the session ID on the querystring from the flash movie. We have a generic swf that we use throughout the Waypoint system which accepts the target URL for the upload as a parameter in the FlashVars. When you render your flash movie from an asp.net page or user control, you can do the following:

<param name="FlashVars" value='uploadPage=Upload.ashx%3fASPSESSID=<%=Page.Session.SessionID%>'/>

This will pass in the session ID as part of the querystring for the upload page. Then you can make your flash movie use the uploadPage parameter to target the upload. The session ID will be read in on the request and the session variables will be loaded.

 

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CSS Caching Issue in BlogEngine.net

clock April 21, 2008 16:37 by author Mike

We're using BlogEngine.net for this blog since it's open source and based on .NET 2.0. So far it works really well. One issue we ran into was that sometimes the stylesheet would not load and the blog would load without any styling applied at all. It happened very sparatically, so finding the issue has been tough. We've followed a post that told us to uncheck "Trim stylesheets" in the settings area. This seems to be working - we'll watch it and see if it resolves it permanently. 

The helpful post was here:

http://www.codeplex.com/blogengine/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=21864 

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Web references and 'MSDiscoCodeGenerator' Error

clock April 18, 2008 07:16 by author Mike

I've been running into an error in Visual Studio .net 2005 when referencing the obelisk web services. 

The custom tool 'MSDiscoCodeGenerator' failed while processing the file '...Reference.map'.


There wasn't that much online about it. One of the better posts I found was here:

http://forums.asp.net/t/986668.aspx

But the solutions posted didn't fix my issue. One method that I tried and seemed to work was to create a new project in VS.net and reference the web service there. Then all the files that are created (.disco, .wsdl, reference.map, reference.cs) I copied over into my broken project. Then I went in and edited the namespaces and project names because they didn't line up. Once I did this I was able to get it to compile, and even hitting "Update Web Reference" works well now. I wish I could figure out what was causing this issue, but it seems to happen perpetually only in this one project, so something on the project level must be corrupted. At some point I will likely create a new project and import all my files to it so the project itself gets reconstructed, and hopefully the issues are cleared out at that point.

 

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Adding pictures to a page in your site

clock April 8, 2008 16:06 by author Mike

There are 2 ways to add pictures to your Waypoint website:

  1. Add a Gallery Viewer component to your page
    • Displays all the pictures from a gallery on the page
    • Allows you to choose how many pictures to show per page. If more than one page is needed, Next, Previous and numeric links appear to allow you navigate the pages.
    • Clicking on a thumbnail will show you the large image.
  2. Add a picture inside a Rich Text Editor
    • Allows you to place individual pictures amongst text on your web page
    • You can choose to show the thumbnail or the large version
    • If you show the thumbnail, you can choose to link it to the large version.

Here's how to perform each of these:

 To add a Gallery Viewer:

  • Log into your website
  • Click Edit Page on the admin menu
  • The Edit Panel on the right has a list of available components that you can add to your page by clicking on them. Click on the Gallery Viewer to add one.
  • The right panel will then display the viewing options. Select a gallery from the dropdown and change any other settings you like.
  • Click Save at the bottom right.
  • Click View Page on the admin menu to return to your page's view mode.

To add pictures in a Rich Text Editor

  • Log into your website
  • Click Edit Page on the admin menu
  • If you have an existing Rich Text Editor box on your page, click on it's Edit icon () to edit it.
  • Otherwise, The Edit Panel on the right has a list of available components that you can add to your page by clicking on them. Click on the Rich Text Editor to add one.
  • You will now be in Edit Mode of your text editor. Click on the Image gallery icon. ()
  • In the dialog that appears, Click on the name of the gallery you want to get a picture from.
  • Above each thumbnail that appears are 3 links. You can add a thumbnail or a large picture depending on which link you click. The linked thumbnail is a small picture that links to the large one.
  • To align your picture once you add it, right click on it and select Image Properties
  • You may wish to change the image alignment option. Change it to right or left justification to make text wrap around it.
  • Click Update on the text editor box to save your changes.

 

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Uploading Pictures to your website with Waypoint

clock April 8, 2008 15:47 by author Mike

Adding pictures to your website with Waypoint is easy to do once you know where to go. Follow these steps to get started:

  1. Log into your website
  2. From the Admin Menu, select My Website >> Galleries >> Manage Galleries
  3. If you have a picture gallery you wish to use, click on it's name.
    • If you want to make a new picture gallery to store your images, click on Add Gallery.
    • Give your gallery a name and click Save
    • Click the name of your new gallery
  4. Click on the Add Pictures Link
  5. Click on Choose Files and a dialog will appear. Choose pictures from your hard drive to add to the gallery.
  6. Click on the Upload button to begin the transfer.
  7. Once complete, you will see the thumbnails of your new pictures. Click on the thumbnails to view the larger versions.

 

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